Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].

Ridge, Benjamin

Date:: 1875

Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$too little to account for the wonderful results we see. There has always aj^peared to me to he too special an action given to all the various powei’S and organs of the body, to the neglect of the great general laAvs governing them all. No points of physiology can be touched upon Avithout raising others wliich bear upon them, and apparently mixing them all up inextricably. The true end of physiology is not a laborious ex{X)- sition of every given point, but the dlscoA'ery of con- clusions from the unanimity of all in producing a vast result. Incalculable evils have arisen from the one; incalculable benefits avIII arise from the other. IVe search, for instance, for a cause in the immediate part A\liere pain happens to be, and Ave say. Such and such an organ is aifected. We search for the cause after death, and do not find it. What Ave saAv, then, could only have been a sympathy arising from some other cause. Had Ave found this out before, avc could haAC done more, j)erhaps, to relieve sufiering or save life. There seems to be a philosophy of error, as Avell as a ])hilosophy of truth. Is it fair to blame an organ Avhen a secretion made in some other is at fault, Avhich is the life of that organ ? If so, then the efiect is blamed, and not the cause. As this is too often the case, it becomes evident Ave have reasoned on a false basis. II. If Ave take, as a first j)roposition, the formation of organs, and look at a muscle: it seems a])parently a solid structAire, yet it is made up of countless num- bers of fibres, every fibre separated by a thin skinny lamina. We ask the meaning of this. This 'muscle could not ])ei'form its duties if it Avas a solid mass. It could not yield that Avonderful flexibility Avhen, in the various contortions of the body, some of its fibres$